Centerstage - Chicago's Original City Guide

Arthur Jolly's " A Gulag Mouse" is the result of a playwriting contest sponsored by the Babes with Blades theater company to create a play based on a particular piece of artwork. It's a neat way to generate creative inspiration and the results hold up well here.

The opening image takes its inspiration from a painting called "Film Noir," which depicts a foggy evening confrontation between two antagonists, one armed with a dagger. Anastasia (Gillian Humiston) is the dagger-wielding protagonist, a young Russian woman who kills her abusive husband, a Soviet soldier. For this, she is sent to one of Stalin's horrific Siberian gulags. Most of the play centers on Anastasia's relationships with her fellow prisoners, an archetypal collection of suffering Russian women, the sadistic Masha (Amy Harmon), her opposite, the sweet and compassionate Prushka (Stephanie Repin), the detached Svetlana (Delia Ford) and Lubov (Kathrynne Wolf) who survives by prostituting herself to the chief guard who gives her and her bunkmates scraps of food.

All of the prisoners, even Prushka, share the philosophy that they must do anything they must in order to survive, putting aside any morality that conflicts with this goal. Anastasia rebels against this, attempting to hold on to her humanity as tightly as she can.

Jeff Lisse's set design - hard bunks and a gaslit stove - emphasizes the bleakness of their situation. Although the play lives up to the company's mission statement of showcasing stage combat for women, there are relatively few blades here. The combat is hand to hand, brutal and primal.

The play's conclusion is unexpected; depending on personal taste, one will find it either trite or powerful, I fall into the latter camp and strongly recommend this moving and well-realized show.